


say goodbye like you mean it

by roisale



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Gen, don't mind me, hm ah yes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-20 23:45:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roisale/pseuds/roisale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it's hard to let go when the farewells aren't mutual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one day after

 

I: one day after

 

“There was nothing unusual,” the doctor tells Mitsuru, puzzlement scribbled across his face in the same illegible writing on his clipboard. “She looked to be in perfect health prior to passing away.”

He excuses himself from the lobby, and the small click of the closing door is the last sound before the dorm is utterly quiet. Aigis slumps in a chair, abandoning her usual ramrod-straight stance for the first time since December, and her eyes are dull and a powered down stormy blue.

It feels colder in the room than before, though the thermostat hasn’t been touched and the momentary draft from outside is long gone – Mitsuru shivers in a way that has little to do with the actual temperature, can’t summon the strength to keep her exterior composed and lets her face crumple, allows herself the scarce luxury of showing pain. Yukari hunches her shoulders, draws herself in tighter and tighter until the breaking point is too close for comfort but she doesn’t notice or care and keeps stretching herself thin until she’s barely holding herself together. Junpei takes off his cap, adjusts the strap, and his hands are visibly shaking, small tremors running through the fingers as he puts it back on. His lips are struggling to stay straight, to keep closed, as if the smallest break will give way to a storm of shock and misery and disbelief and hurt.

Not far from the door, Akihiko stands alone, and under the black leather gloves his fingers twitch, threatening to curl into fists. He stops them before they do, stops them like he stops the bewilderment from taking him over. Fuuka’s small hands grip each other nervously in her lap and her eyes are fixed on the ground. She’s afraid to let herself think about anything in particular, she’s terrified of seeing her friends because the devastated looks on their faces might just shatter the blank one on her own as well as the only bit of her heart that isn’t in pieces yet. Koromaru whines softly beside her, circles for a few seconds before he sits, his head down and his tail limp on the floor. Ken faces a window so that nobody can see his mouth trembling– suddenly he’s eight years young again, by himself in the wreckage of total destruction and a wasteland littered with the debris of childish promises that were made to be broken.

And by the time the clock strikes midnight, the lobby is deserted.


	2. a week later

II: a week later

           

The SEES members don’t cry during the funeral. Around them are the tearful and the sobbing – in front of them, lying in a coffin, is a pale girl and her faint smile. Her dorm mates wear their armbands for her; wear them proud.

It’s their turn to speak and they step up one after the other and talk like they’re supposed to except it feels empty and wrong since there’s so much more they could say, so much more they _want_ to say, but they’re all things they want to say to _her_ , all things they’d only ever be able to say to each other.

Seven people hesitate just before stepping down because the last word left is ‘goodbye’, and

seven people return to their seats with goodbyes unsaid.

There’s a fractured sense of finality as the flowers fall, and no one is brave enough to fill in the cracks.


	3. the new school year

 

III: the new school year

 

Mitsuru and Akihiko are gone, and the rest of them split apart after the dorm shuts down, but they’re not on their own, not really. Aigis and Yukari are roommates, and they see Junpei at school everyday despite the fact that they’re in different classes. Koromaru is (somehow) given permission to stay with Ken at the elementary school dorm, and the five of them all gather at the shrine on Sundays anyway – things are more or less the same as before. It’s a half-truth they tell themselves over and over to distract from the hollow space in their chests. They’re not alone, because they have each other, though shortly afterwards they learn that there is a very thick line between being alone and being lonely.

Sometimes, Yukari still finds herself in front of the door at the end of the hallway, even if it’s not the one she used to knock on and the girl in the room is another person entirely. The minutes spent on the monorail are quiet and the empty space to her left surprises her now and then, when she turns, mouth half-open and the start of a sentence beginning to form on the tip of her tongue. From time to time she joins Aigis on the rooftop, and the two of them lean on the railing – one appreciates the view and the other contemplates the brevity of biological life.  Junpei and Fuuka show up, too, on occasion, and then there’re four seniors watching over the city from the school roof.

Conversation between them and anyone outside of their quartet is painfully superficial since opening up to outsiders is impossibly difficult. The barrier remains.

So they’re lonely at first, but

it gets better.


	4. one year passes

IV: one year passes

 

Much to everyone’s (only half-joking) surprise, Junpei gets into college along with the rest of them. They start running into Akihiko around town and campus. If they’ve all got space in their schedules and a coffee shop is open nearby, the five of them crowd inside and strike up idle chitchat while nursing cappuccinos or espressos.

“Mitsuru’s studying in Paris,” Akihiko says one day, grimacing a little at the bitter black sloshing in his cup. “She’s running the company at the same time, too. I’ve honestly got no idea how she’s doing it.”

Yukari smiles, puts her own mug down and reflexively licks the foam off of her upper lip. “That’s Mitsuru for you.” The words are fond and warmly affectionate. Next to her, Junpei fiddles with his necklace, his mouth twitching. Two years ago Yukari and Mitsuru tiptoed by each other like soldiers on a mine-riddled road. It’s different now, he reminds himself, letting go of the silver chain.

  The sun is about to set by the time they bid each other farewell, and Junpei walks back alone, his hands in his pockets, shivering a little despite the late afternoon warmth that envelopes the city. It’s the first day of March but the air still bites at his skin like it did in the dead of winter. He doesn’t mind the cold nearly as much as he used to, because now it just calls to mind chilly November nights and long dog walks with his best friend in the whole wide world.

Nowadays, if someone asks about his best friend, he chuckles and tells them he threw sunflowers at her funeral.


	5. five years, then

V: five years, then

 

Ken’s sixteen and manages to fit in reasonably well with his schoolmates at Gekkoukan, though in the opinion of everyone involved he’s a little _too_ grown up for a high school student. Teachers describe him as mature and hardworking; boys say he’s cool but kind of an old man. He’s inexplicably popular with girls but he turns them all down and says with a sheepish smile that he already has somebody he likes. Speculation abounds.

(nobody knows that he spends valentine’s day in a cemetery.)

He takes Koromaru out a walk now and then, and while he doesn’t particularly mind being alone, he almost always ends up standing by himself at Naganaki Shrine for upwards of thirty minutes while his friend frolics happily. Walking Koromaru is one of the more dangerous things in town, if only because it gives him plenty of time and an unfortunately nostalgic place to think. Sometimes when he’s watching Koromaru it strikes him as rather sad that nobody truly understands the dog, not anymore. (is koromaru upset about it? ken isn't sure. he probably won't ever be sure.) Other times he takes out his phone and considers calling up Akihiko or Junpei or Fuuka, for want of someone to talk to, but in the end,

he doesn’t.

Instead, he slips the phone back into his pocket and whistles for Koromaru and then they’re walking through quiet streets in soft moonlight.

 

Ken's sixteen and has a promising future ahead of him – he’s got his life in order, his priorities straight. Sixteen and _serious_. Sixteen and heartbroken. (but what else is new?)

Sixteen and the one thing he shies away from is making promises.

Sixteen and he’s halfway through the door between past and future. (he’s always in the present but the difference is that present-day ken amada is indisputably lonely. the present is full of should-haves and would-haves, but they hurt all the more because at the end of the day he knows there is nothing he could have done.)

He spends Graduation Day in front of a gravestone, and six people hear him say,

“I’ll be able to say goodbye for real someday.”  

 

(someday is when the door swings shut and he steps into the future; someday is when he asks someone to make a promise again.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i imagine ken/femc as a one sided crush but not a typical little-kid crush, u feel  
> but that just makes it even more sad bc i think it takes him a long time to really move on  
> (wouldn't that make for great conversation though like "hey who was your first love" "oh i fell in love with this superhero high school girl who died like eight months after i met her in a tragic act of self-sacrifice yk the usual")


End file.
